Growing Up
by EveryPennyCounts
Summary: Lovino and Gilbert were friends as children, or at least Gilbert considered Lovino his friend and Lovino just had no one else to hang out with. Their relationship fell apart, but one day they find themselves back in the same spot- and just the same yet drastically different then when they parted. (Prumano)
1. A Childhood

**Yes hello I am back and actually posting content! I know I should be trying to write _War Story,_ but I just have no idea how to progress the story line, so I'm going to leave it be for now. I actually have high hopes for this story as I actually have an outline for the plot! Yay for planning! The story is probably going to be short, though. Regardless, thank you for your time!**

* * *

When Lovino was little, a family of four (much similar to his own) lived in the house across the street. They were from Germany, and their light hair and blue eyes were the telling evidence. Lovino always questioned why a German family would have come to Italy, but his _fratellino_ , Feliciano, had no such reserves, and he quickly went about befriending the youngest son.  
Lovino remembered watching Feli and the little boy play in either yard; most likely the neighbors' three dogs would be with them. He might of been jealous of their friendship, but he wasn't ever very lonely, for he spent his time cooking with his _mamma_ or listening to his _papà_ tell stories.  
But, despite all his time spend with his parents, he never felt like the favorite, or even particularly loved. It wasn't him who was doted over when he tracked in mud, praised when he sang his loudest off-key or applauded when he smeared paint over a canvas. It wasn't him who was the promising prodigy of the family. Lovino didn't hate his _fratello_ for this, of course, but he did become bitter. Never mind trying his hardest when it would never be as good as Feliciano.  
Lovino had become reclusive in his home until one day while his parents were out a knock came at the door. Feli must have been out playing, or else he would have rushed to answer the call. Knowing what he must do, Lovino quickly threw away the half finished half-finished drawing he was working on and crept into the living room. After a moment of bracing himself before the door, he pulled it open.  
On the other side of the threshold stood a boy not too much older than he: about seven. What was startling about this boy was first and foremost his eyes. Bright crimson that sharply contrasted his pale skin and near-white hair which was shaved almost to the scalp.  
Lovino couldn't find himself able to form words, but he was saved from the awkward silence by the boy asking a question.  
"My _mutter_ is having a fancy birthday party and wants to know if your _mutter_ and _vater_ wanted to come."  
Lovino sputtered out a response. "I- I don't know... what's a _mutter_?" He added with embarrassment gracing his cheeks. He recognized this boy now: he was the oldest son of the German family across the street. He had seen him around before, but never close enough to see his eyes, which Lovino now saw were quite intimidating.  
"Ha! _Mutter_ means _mamma,_ duh. Anyway, can they? My _mutter_ will not be happy if I come back without an answer."  
At this point Lovino's initial nervousness had melted away and been replaced by his usual irritation at this boy's audacity. Never mind the scary eyes, how was he supposed to answer that?  
"Heck if I know. They're not here. I don't know when they'll be back, so there's no point in continuing to bother me. Bye." Lovino made to shut the door in his face and be done with the encounter, but the boy quickly pushed through the door into the threshold.  
"Alright, if you don't know then I'll just wait until your parents get here." He didn't seem at all deterred by Lovino's evident annoyance. "Oh! I know: we can get to know each other while we wait!"  
"There's no way I'm doing that. Get out."  
'Haha! You're funny."  
Lovino sighed at how powerless he was. He never had much control over anything, anyway.  
"Okay!" The boy practically yelled as he plopped himself down in one of the living room chairs. "First things first, my name is Gilbert the Awesome. Now, what's yours?"  
Lovino didn't answer nor sit down with him, and instead he planted himself firmly where he was and crossed his arms over his chest, feigning authority.  
Gilbert frowned, but he had an ace up his sleeve.  
"Alright, if you won't tell me then I'll just snoop around until I find something good."  
He promptly lunged for a loose sheet of crumbled paper sitting on the ground, which Lovino realized too late was the drawing he tried to throw in the trash earlier. With a sort of strangled screech, he tried to wrestle the paper from Gilbert's grasp, but he found himself both too short and too weak.  
"Woah! This is good, dude! Did you draw this?"  
Lovino's frantic energy quickly melted away and he drew beck into himself. "N- no. Feliciano drew it."  
Gilbert looked slightly disappointed for a second and turned his gaze back to the paper. However, something he found on the paper sparked his interest.  
"Nuh-uh! It has a different name right here!" Gilbert turned the drawing towards him and pointed to the corner where Lovino had been practicing his signature. A blush grew on his cheeks as he stuttered, "I mean- I was just- I-"  
"Why would you lie about this? It's super cool, Lovino!"  
Gilbert threw his arm around Lovino's hunched shoulders and proclaimed, "Vino, you're pretty awesome! Therefore, I now declare you my friend!"

* * *

From that point on, it wasn't unusual for Gilbert to walk his brother over to their neighbors' house. Lovino often acted annoyed when Gilbert came around, but something inside him stopped being so bitter and jealous.  
Gilbert constantly encouraged Vino to draw and sing, dragged him outside, and even brought other friends of his over. Basically, he made Lovino more active and social than ever before.  
And despite how much they would deny it, Lovino helped Gilbert too. Gil had an ego problem, and Vino, being as he is, refused to let Gil have all authoritative power to himself, especially after Lovino found out just how scrawny and prone to pouting Gil was.

* * *

The German family from across the street moved away the next year, and neither Lovino nor Gilbert gave the other a thought for a very long time.


	2. An Encounter

**And chapter two is out! This was originally supposed to be in the same part as chapter one but I guess this works too.**  
 **Something I forgot to mention in the first chapter: I don't swear, well, I don't swear with cuss words. I can bear other people using them, but the thought of using them myself makes me uncomfortable. My point is, I know Lovino is canonically a person who curses a lot, but, ya know, I don't like doing it, so I'm going to be using the watered down versions of curse words. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, but the best I can suggest is imagining that I'm using the real one.**  
 **Anyway, thanks for understanding and reading! Enjoy!**

The music blasting through his headphones proved futile when it came to trying to drown out his _fratello_ 's cheerful chattering.  
Not that he was surprised at all; Feliciano could talk a mile a minute and not remember a word he said, especially when he was excited. And what more could you be excited about then beginning a new year of college? Quite a lot, Lovino thought, but for Feli, transferring schools was a chance to meet tons of new people (and leave behind the ones he didn't like). Lovino chafed at the reminder of his new school; right when he finally convinced people to stop trying to talk to him, he had to start at a different school. But neither luck nor finances has ever seemed to be in his favor, so he really shouldn't have been surprised. And now Feli had begun to sing. Great.  
Now, Lovino loved his brother- as he was one of the few people who would bear his constant irritation- but he was a big cause of the irritation in the first place. Then again, wasn't everyone? Lovino slouched down in his seat but kept his head high enough to see over the wheel in ground of him.  
"Lovi! Don't do that! You're worse at driving than me!"  
"Ah, heck, no! I'm not the one with ten driving tickets, and, ya know what, I'm gonna do what I want!"  
"Lovi, be happier! We're both going to this new school and after this we're gonna be the best chefs in _Italia_ and-"  
Lovino sighed loud enough to drown out his _fratello,_ but Feli continued to speak in a non-stop stream. Either he truly was oblivious, or he chose to keep talking for whatever obscure reason that might be in his head. Probably the ever present "Lovi needs to be more cheerful" one.  
"Oh, Lovi! It's this turn!" Feliciano lunged over to the wheel and jerked it to the side, causing the car to carean wildly around the corner and under a huge arch of balloons welcoming new students.  
"Whoops," he said innocently as he looked through the back window at someone who appeared to be flicking them off.  
Lovino snorted. "Good one, Feli, but next time you do that I will slap you."  
Feli laughed along with his _fratello_. "Sure you will!"  
Lovino pulled the car into the dorm parking lot and turned it off. He slouched down in his chair even further and groaned. They were finally here. Feli squealed in excitement and jumped out of the car to start unloading. Lovi stared up at the large dorm building for a while in an attempt to brace himself for the remainder of the day before joining his brother.  
After one trip of moving boxes, two people walked up to their car: a tall blond and a short Asian. Both seemed slightly awkward standing there.  
The blond cleared his throat. "Excuse me. My name is Ludwig, and this is Kiku." Kiku did a short bow in greeting. "We are hall advisors here. May we held you unload your bags?"  
"Yes, _grazie_! My name is Feliciano, and this is my brother, Lovino!" chirped Feliciano then he promptly hefted two large boxes into Ludwig's arms, then he picked a significantly smaller one up for himself and led the way up to his room, chattering all the way.  
"Would you like me to assist you?" Kiku asked Lovino.  
"Whatever," he responded.  
Kiku frowned and looked even more awkward than before, "I, uh, I don't mean to intrude. If you don't want me to-"  
Lovino shoved a box into his arms and started towards the building carrying two more.  
"I'm on floor-freaking-ten so you're in for it." Lovino was feeling more irritated by the minute. Why were there so many people?  
Lovino heard a muttered apology from behind him and he immediately felt bad, but didn't say anything. His wanted to reassure Kiku, but his pride stopped up his throat. Why should he need to apologize all the time anyway? It wasn't his fault that Kiku took him the wrong way.  
Lovino was too wrapped up in his thoughts about why he had to have such a crappy personality to notice the man walking towards him, so he proceeded to crash into him, causing his boxes to explode and throw their contents all across the hallway.  
"What the heck, watch where your going!"  
" _I_ need to watch it? _You_ walked right into _me_ , you freaking jerk!"  
Lovino turned his eyes upward to stare down the person who turned his bad day horrible, and there stood a man not too much older than he: about twenty-one. What was startling about this man was first and foremost his eyes. Bright crimson that sharply contrasted his pale skin and near-white hair which was cut short.  
A sense of uneasiness and familiarity came with this man's presence, and Lovino couldn't shake it off.  
The man narrowed his eyes as if he felt the same uncertainty, and the two scrutinized each other until Lovino broke his gaze to pick up his scattered items.  
"Freaking jerk," he muttered.  
"Whatever. Thanks for making me late."  
Lovino heard footsteps walking away, and it was only then that he noticed that all the residents of the hallway had gone silent. He felt his cheeks color with embarrassment and he hastened his cleaning. He felt Kiku bend down to help him, and he hoped his gratitude could be conveyed silently, because he didn't trust his voice not to crack if he spoke and once again he found his pride forbidding him from embarrassing himself further.  
When his boxes were once again packed, he hurried his way to his dorm, which upon arriving he found to be empty. His roommate had yet to arrive. He quickly set his boxes down and started down for another load, keeping his eyes downcast the entire way.  
When he got to the car he saw Feli still talking animatedly with Ludwig, who replied stiffly to everything he said. Lovino decided that he didn't like him, for he too seemed much too familiar.  
It didn't take long for Feli to notice his _fratello_ and upon seeing him he exclaimed, "Lovi, Lovi, look it's Ludwig from all those years ago! You remember how he and Gil (you always played with Gil did you not?) lived across the street and they had those three cute dogs, oh! And Gil goes here too did you know-"  
But Lovino only had to listen long enough for a blush to grace Ludwig's face before he connected the red-eyed man's face to that of the child he once played with so often.  
Lovino groaned audibly and hoped hard that Gilbert would never put two and two together, because if he did, Lovino would never find any sort of peace in his last remaining year of college.


	3. Same Class Suffering

Lovino awoke to the shrill of an alarm and the familiar feeling of dread for the coming day. He turned over in his bed and was surprised to find boxes not belonging to him littering the room, as it had been far past midnight before Lovino had gone to bed.  
He glanced over at the other bed found there to be a man, fully clothed, sprawled like a starfish on the mattress. His tan skin seemed to indicate lots of time spent outside, but seeing how deeply he was sleeping, it was hard to imagine that he ever left the bed. And he was snoring. _Loudly_.  
Lovino groaned audibly and it reverberated through his soul.  
As loudly as he could, Lovino stomped around the room whilst doing all the things necessary to get ready- which included stacking all of his roommate's boxes precariously around his bed and resisting the urge to draw a mustache on his unconscious roommate. He snickered to himself at his work when he was done.  
Checking his watch revealed that moving the boxes took much longer than he expected, and now it was very likely that he was going to be late. Oh, shoot.  
Lovino snatched up his book bag and prayed to all the heavenly deities that would listen that he had the correct books in it. Once he had bolted out the door and successfully woke up everyone (minus good ole roomie) on the hallway with his rampant running, he zoomed out the building and down the sidewalk.  
Directly after turning the first corner, Lovino realized that he didn't know where he was going. A quick search with his phone done with frantic, fumbling fingers found him his way, and after several more turns and nearly bowling over quite a few sleep deprived students he found himself in the proper lecture room. He was indeed late, but for once luck had decided to play friendly, and so was the teacher.  
Lovino breathed properly for the first time since he burst out his door. He promised himself that he would never see himself late to class again- and then he laughed bitterly because he knew that it would most certainly happen many more times in the following year. Lovino's success so far put him in a gracious enough mood to thank whatever force of nature had decided to favor him today.  
Isn't fate just awesome?  
It was right at that moment that Lovino caught a flash of silvery hair on the opposite side of the room. Dangit, fate, how could you.  
Lovino slammed his books down on the open desk he found farthest away from that red-eyed jerk. He felt like praying again, but he knew now that the gods were only laughing at him. They're freaking jerks too, he thought. Lovino went to pull his hood over his head but found that he wasn't wearing one, so he resorted to burying his face in his arms and making a quiet sound like a repressed scream. Gosh, he hated the world.  
It was just then that the teacher walked in and called order, directing everyone to sit down. Lovino didn't lift up his head and instead resorted to peeking through his fingers as the white blob made its way through the crown of harried people.  
Closer.  
Closer.  
And right freaking in front of him, gosh dangit.  
Well, not _right_ in front, but certainly close enough to be too close. Then again, him being anywhere in sight was too close. There was to be no winning here.  
Lovino slouched down in his chair, a move that was quickly become signature to him. The class seemed to pass by without any issue, and Lovino kept glancing at the back of that silvery head to make sure the uneventful air would remain.  
The end of the uncomfortable period was nearly passed when a final glance revealed that the red-eyed bane of Lovino's existence (one of many) had seen him too, and when their eyes met he gave the largest, goofiest, and scariest smile Lovino had ever seen. Oh, heck, no.  
Lovino jerked his gaze away violently enough to draw looks from the people near him and a suppressed chuckle from the cause of all this struggle. Freaking, _dangit_.  
The last thing Lovino needed was to be reminded of his past where he was maybe happy because that just threw into sharp relief how unhappy he was now. Not just unhappy- he was freaking miserable with his freaking stupid life and horrible personality and-  
Just then the teacher dismissed her class and Lovino made to turn-tail and run, but a firm hand yanked him back by the shoulder.  
"Vino! My _bruder_ told me all about how you and your _bruder_ transferred to here!"  
Lovino stayed glued to his spot and felt incredibly stiff when Gilbert turned him around. No, no, _no_.  
"We have a ton of catching up to do, I mean, I haven't seen you in what? Over ten years? So anyway, how've you been?"  
"Terrible!" Lovino hissed with as much venom he could muster, and once he pulled all his anger together he found it wasn't hard at all to feel so and he whipped his eyes up to glare at Gilbert. His grasp on the wrath faltered when he saw himself reflected in red.  
"Well that's no good at all!" Gilbert responded with an almost taunting ease, "You sure about that?"  
Lovino's grip retightened. " _Sì_."  
Gilbert raised a brow at the magnitude of this scrawny boy's anger. "Alright, alright, I believe you."  
Lovino whipped around and began stomping his way out of the now-empty lecture room. All he wanted to be way away from there and the annoying memories that were practically in the air Gilbert breathed out. It was unbearable.  
"Oh, and sorry about knocking into you yesterday. I thought you were just some random idiot, but nope, it was my idiot."  
Lovino made a strangled noise and tripped over an invisible object on he floor and obnoxious laughter followed him out the door.  
He then picked up the pace considerably and near-ran back to his dorm. He hated reminders. It was always so much easier not to think at all.

* * *

 **Woah, drama bomb. I honestly did not intend for it to get so dramatic, wow- I planned for it to be more awkward than that, whoops. And anyway, my style actually seemed to change a little for this one? I recently began reading _I am the Messenger_ by Markus Zusak and his writing really inspired me or something, I donno. Just bear with me. Also, there's some symbolism in here that I'm actually kinda proud of so have fun with that!**  
 **Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!**


End file.
